1998 -
Half-Life
Half-Life is a sci-fi first-person shooter game developed by Valve and released in November, 1998. The story of the game revolves around Dr. Gordon Freeman finding his way out of the Black Mesa Research Facility after an experiment goes horribly wrong and opens a portal to another dimension known as Xen. Alien creatures from Xen emerge from this portal and begin attacking any humans in sight, and the military has been called in to cover up the incident. It is up to Gordon Freeman and the remaining scientists to close the portal. The inspiration for Half-Life came from Doom and Stephen King's The Mist. Half-Life was acclaimed for its graphics and realistic gameplay at the time, and it received over 50 "Game of the Year" awards. It is considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time by many gamers around the world. What's interesting is that in the middle of the game's development, Valve created a group called the "cabal", which was initially a group of six individuals that would work six-hour meetings for four days a week. The "cabal" was responsible for designing all aspects of the game, including the levels, the enemies, the story, and other gameplay features. In the end, the "cabal" produced a 200-page design document for the game that described practically all aspects of the game! Half-Life has many puzzles for the player to solve, such as exploring a maze of conveyor belts or using boxes to climb to the next floor. It is one of the first games to utilize continuous first-person control of the Gordon Freeman (except for very short cutscenes and levels loading). This means the game officially doesn't have any levels and seems more realistic. People tend to remember the classic crowbar weapon that Gordon Freeman can use, as well as the famous "headcrab" enemy!
Unreal
Unreal is a first-person shooter game developed by Epic MegaGames, Digital Extremes and Legend Entertainment in May 1998. Many people are probably aware of Unreal Engine, one of the most top-notch game engines for realistic 3D games today. Well, Unreal was the first game that was made with the Unreal Engine, hence the name. And it is still used to this day! Unreal was actually in development for three years and was created in Tim Sweeney's garage, the founder of Epic MegaGames! Unreal was mostly funded by their previous game, Epic Pinball. Intel invited Epic MegaGames to demonstrate the game to them, and they became interested in the game. Intel told Epic about their upcoming MMX code (a simple instruction, multiple data instruction set) and Sweeney actually made an MMX version of the Unreal rendering code before he even received a chip with MMX. Unreal came packaged with its own scripting language called UnrealScript, which soon developed a large community online for game mods and other gameplay features. Unreal also came with a map editor called UnrealEd, which allowed players to create even more interesting content. This game helped revolutionize graphics, as it was one of the first to use texture mapping. This type of texturing enhanced surfaces with a second texture for material detail. So when the player stands close to a building, he/she can actually see that the surface texture and material are more complex than it appeared from far away. This was a ground-breaking game in terms of realism for its time! In terms of Unreal's story, the player assumes the role of Prisoner 849 aboard a prison spacecraft known as Vortex Rikers. As this ship is traveling to the moon-based prison, the ship gets caught in the gravitational pull of the planet Na Pali and crash-lands. Na Pali is home to the Nali, a tribal race of four-armed humanoid creatures. The Nali are under subjugation by the Skaarj, a race of technologically-advanced reptilian humanoid creatures. It is up to the player to travel through Na Pali and Skaarj spaceships to kill the Skaarj Queen and escape the planet! The environments in this game are super engaging and lively. I have to say that the level design, weapons, and pick-ups (flashlights, seeds to grow health plants, a console that logs info, etc.) in this game is very unique. This game set the foundation for the Unreal Engine, which is one of the most popular engines nowadays.
Half-Life gameplay screenshot
Unreal gameplay screenshot